


To Begin With

by JessaLRynn



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Babies, Cute, Doctor Who Feels, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:18:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3929674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is where she started, how she came there to begin with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Begin With

**Author's Note:**

> For jer832, with love.

"Romana!"

The young Time Lord looked up from her brand new guest, rolling her eyes as the Doctor charged along the corridors with a thunder like a bull-elephant.  He was a big man in this incarnation, though usually light on his feet, but he could make a tremendous amount of noise if he chose to do.  Her truncated name echoed up and down the halls with increasing annoyance, and Romana sighed.

Either the human girl liked the sound of the Doctor's voice, or she was born fearless.  The intelligence in those eyes was surprising and intent, the infant peering curiously up at Romana without the slightest trace of distress at a stranger's voice, a ridiculous noise, an alien touch.  Weren't human infants born familiar with their parents?  Romana couldn't remember.

The Doctor was talking, she noticed, utterly oblivious to his audience, or the lack thereof.  “I’ve no idea why the Tracer brought us here,” he complained. “It’s dead as a tinned kipper, now.  Ro-man-a!”

She stalked out into the corridor, pink bundle in hand.  "Quiet," she ordered, with the full haughty weight of her title and her House.  The Doctor blinked at her, as if for all his yowling, he'd expected her to have vanished.  "You'll wake the baby."

He stared at her as if he was stupid or, more to his usual point, as if she was stupid and had never been told.  Romana decided she was going to enjoy this one.  "What baby?"

"The baby, Doctor," she said, feigning exasperation. Although, it was a point that Romana usually didn’t carry around small, swaddled, wiggly bundles, so maybe the exasperation wasn’t so feigned.  "Don't be ridiculous."

"We don't have a baby," he said warily.  "I'm reasonably sure I'd remember that."

Romana decided she would have to give that conclusion some consideration at a later time.  "We didn't have a baby," she corrected, cheerfully.  "We do now."

"Why?"  He blinked at her, blue eyes as wide and curious and utterly uncomprehending as the child's in Romana's arms.  It was impressive, she decided, because the Doctor shouldn’t have been able to look innocent about anything, never mind absolutely everything.

"I thought it would liven up the place," she settled on, because that sounded about as irrational as his earlier excuse of going out with the Tracer because there was no other reason for the TARDIS to have stopped here - though the Tracer was obviously not the reason, either.

"Wh..."  The look on his face was worth all she’d had to endure since leaving Gallifrey, from the stress to the mud to the terror to the insults.  "K9, what is she on about?" the Doctor demanded.

"Detecting humanoid female infant, approximately nineteen minutes old," the robot dog replied.  "Condition: excellent.  Len..."

"No it is not excellent!" the Doctor snapped back, his disgust evident.  Romana was having the time of her lives.  "Nothing about this is excellent!  Who told you you knew the first thing about babies?"

Romana chose to believe he was talking to the dog, especially as K9 chose to think this as well.  However, she knew she had the older Time Lord right where she wanted him, so she had to hide her smirk with a pout.  "But she's such a little human."

The Doctor glared at her, thunderstruck and speechless.

"I picked up a small one, because no one could possibly miss her."

"Of course someone will miss her!" he shouted.  "How can you possibly think!!?..."

"You do it all the time," Romana pointed out, innocently and accurately.

"Romanadvoratrelundar!" he bellowed.  "You put that child back where you found it immediately!"

It was only then, for the very first time, that the baby began to cry.  Romana glared.  "Now, look what you've done," she said, and tried gently rocking it, as she'd always seen it done.  "There, there, child," she soothed quietly.

"Try a name," the Doctor suggested blandly, while Romana attempted, unsuccessfully, to stem the flood of tiny grief.

"Rose," the young Time Lord soothed.  "There, now, Rose, you're safe with friends."

The Doctor started to look quite amused as Romana failed to quiet her.  Romana wasn't having that.  This joke was on him, not the other way around.  "You started this noise," she said.  "She was completely calm before this.  Make it stop."

"Oh no," he said, massive paws in the air as he backed away slowly.  "You wanted to steal a baby, you have to see to its comfort."

"I didn't steal her," Romana snapped indignantly.  The baby gave a piercing scream, and Romana held her closer, just by instinct, which surprisingly made the baby calmer.    "See, she likes me."

"Oh, yes," the Doctor said sarcastically.  "Give it here."

"Not until you call her 'her'.  You spend half your life with humans, what's so wrong with a tiny one?"

"They drool and have no control over their biological functions," the Doctor grumbled.  "Also, they are cute."

"Sounds like most of the species to me," Romana answered dryly.

"This is not human," K9 supplied, apropos of nothing.

"This type's also tiny and loud," the Doctor added, over the whimpering wails of Romana's charge.

"Still haven't heard anything distinguishing this one from the adults," she pointed out.  "Well, I suppose they're not all tiny.  Still, I doubt she'll be any particular trouble.  She's small enough to put in a pocket and I doubt she'll eat much..."

"You'd be surprised," the Doctor answered wryly.  The baby only cried.  Romana glared at the Doctor because, after all, the child's upset was due to him, anyway.  "Give her here," he said, resigned.

"Don't put her into your pockets.  I doubt even a human would live very long in there."

"That is not human," K9 repeated, inexplicably.

"Do you want her to stop wailing, or would you prefer she scream 'til she gets sick on your dress?"

"Is that likely?" Romana wondered, looking at the tiny girl in genuine wonder.  She'd gone from no trouble at all to louder than anything needed to be in seconds, so the young Time Lord wouldn't have been surprised really if the Doctor had said she was capable of shrieking the Beethoven's Fifth if you pushed her belly the right way.

"Very likely," the Doctor said.  "Remind me to tell you about what happened when Susan brought home the basket of kittens.”

"No thanks," Romana said, carefully tilting the baby to figure out how to pass her over without breaking her.  "I lived at the Academy as a Senior Postulant. A basket of kittens would’ve been an improvement.”

“Probably,” the Doctor allowed.  “I once had a pet star.  It ate one of Borusa’s labs.”

“I think she’s getting louder,” Romana allowed warily.

The Doctor chuckled and, before Romana knew what, exactly, had happened, he'd scooped the baby into his large arms.  She practically disappeared with all the layers of coat and scarf and nonsense.  Thankfully, however, she also discovered a new noise.  Romana stared.  “Is she…?”

“Laughing,” the Doctor said, and he grinned widely, and stared happily into the baby face.  “Hello, Rose,” he boomed, and the child made a gurgling sound in response.  He looked up.  “Now, Romana, what exactly is going on here?”

**

_Jackie is pretty sure she turned left when she should have turned right.  It doesn't make any sense to her, but she knows she made a mistake here, somewhere._

_"The mistake was doing this in the first place," Jackie grumbles.  She should have gone to her mum's, like any sensible girl.  She should have let Bev stay the week.  But no, she had to be stubborn.  She'd be fine, she said, no need to worry.  Baby's not due 'til next week anyway, no problem._

_Pete is in Ireland trying to find someone to make his stupid Vitex in bulk packages or something.  Or maybe the person was going to buy it all, or sell it to Pete or something.  Jackie doesn't really care exactly, because what it all amounts to is that she's now nine months pregnant and waddling down the street wondering if she should be catching a bus to hospital or ringing an ambulance._

_Something's wrong.  She can feel it.  She doesn't know what, and she doesn't know how she knows, but something is very, very wrong.  Her belly is aching, but not like they told her it would.  It feels like something's breaking, like there's fire where there was previously just the heavy weight of this mobile little person within her._

_She's been trying to make up her mind where she's supposed to be, but the panic's set in deep now, and Jackie doesn't know what to do. She's lost, she thinks, because this isn't where she's supposed to be at all, and she turns left because it looks almost familiar, while right looks strewn with rubbish.  What if she dies?  What if the baby dies?  What if they both do?  What if..._

_She nearly walks into the woman... angel... person? before she notices her.  Jackie stares at the white dress, at the white hands and the dark, dark hair, and she can't think, she just can't.  Something's wrong, something terrible.  She gives the woman a pleading look.  "Help?" she breathes._

_The brunette gives her a look that's such a bizarre mix of cold compassion and innocent curiosity that Jackie is convinced the creature's an angel, not a person.  A miracle would definitely help right now. Jackie gasps as pain wracks her body._

_The woman's eyes widen.  "Let's get you inside," she says in a firm, no nonsense tone.  Maybe she was wrong.  Maybe the woman's not an angel, just a very sensible doctor.  She might be a nurse or maybe a princess - she has beauty and a sort of earned arrogance, deserved haughtiness.   She still might be an angel.  There's pain, then, and nothing else at all._

_Jackie doesn't know for sure what happens next.  She gets the impression of white, lots of white, so it's either a miracle or a hospital.  "I don't like this at all," she hears the posh angel woman say at one point, and at another, "Have to treat everything at once, that's the only hope for it."_

_There's a moment Jackie would swear she hears singing, but then the dark-haired woman is bending over her with some kind of instrument in her hand.  "I'm sorry, Jacqueline," she says, and Jackie doesn't know why she knows her name at all.  "I think it's safest for you if you sleep while I take care of you and your baby. Is that all right?"_

_"Is... is Tony okay?"  They'd long since picked out the name for the baby, but they didn't ask the gender because they were just sure he was going to be a boy._

_The woman gives her a strangely tilted smile.  "She's better than you are at the moment, but that won't wait..."_

_"Rose," Jackie says, as she realizes.  Hah, told him, it was a girl like he wanted, so there._

_The woman frowns, and there's a sound like flowing water, followed by a dull pong.  "Rose?" she questions._

_"The baby," Jackie insists.  She doesn't know why her eyelids suddenly weigh a hundred pounds, but the woman said she needed to sleep.  'Course she did.  Had to get plenty of rest with a baby on the way... "Rose for a girl."_

**

The voices sounded like gossiping fairies.  Even as the years went by, that was something Jackie always tried to forget, the fact that as she swam to consciousness at first, she was convinced she was surrounded by chatty little balls of light.

“Poor little thing.  Born in the back of a police car, can you believe it?”

“Police car?” another fairy voice twinkled.  “I’d heard it was a box car.”

“That’s just silly. No, I’m sure they said police.”

“Yes, well, Jean’s sure they said box, so what…”

“They can’t’ve meant a Police Box, can they?”

Jackie blinked open her eyes.  Absurd.  Reality swam.  She closed her eyes again until it went a little more still.

“That’s ridiculous, where do you even find those these days?”

“Perhaps she was born in a proper phone booth?”

Jackie forced her lips apart.  Let the fairies babble all they wanted, provided they did it somewhere else.  “My baby…” she murmured.  That was the only important thing.

“Oh, hello, someone’s awake.”

There was an awful flurry of activity, then, and Jackie’s drugged brain eventually caught on that these were nurses, not fairies, all come to see the pretty baby born under strange circumstances.  They got her situated and comforted, pillows and blankets and adjustments, vitals and fluids and so much going on, and  the only thing Jackie wanted to know was…

“Is my baby okay?” she demanded.

A bundle of pink, unimaginably small, was finally placed into her arms and Jackie sighed in relief.  Her baby girl looked back at her with a thoughtful, interested expression, too wide and wise for a new born, but so perfect.  Jackie resolved then and there to never take this one for granted.

Pete charged into the room, then, looking frantic, and Jackie cried to see him, her emotions too tangled to process in a crazy instant like this.  “Come see her,” Jackie ordered, and her father approached on tenterhooks, wariness and excitement in his every move.

Things were very blurry for awhile after that.  Whatever medicine they’d given her, Jackie spent most of that day feeling almost like she’d been to another world.  Some time before it was all over, and the baby was taken from her arms to be put in a cot to sleep, Jackie remembered that it’d never been said to anyone.  “Her name’s Rose,” she told the handsome, sweetly smiling man who was checking on her this hour.

He nodded.  “We have that down,” he promised, in a strangely American sounding accent.  “Her Doctor told us.”


End file.
